It’s always an intoxicating experience when a movie that you aren’t yet convinced about lures you in and sweeps you off your feet before you even know it. The Dark Knight started out decently, if a little choppy and confusing, but once the movie twisted into its final third, it blew me away.

I don’t know how anybody can even seriously think about making a superhero movie after this one. Nothing could possibly come close.

From the first “pencil trick” moment with the Joker, you know that you’re not in for your little brother’s comic book flic. The danger and tension in this movie is so real that there always lurks the definite possibility that the bad guy will not pay for his crimes in the end and that many innocents will die.

One of the main things that give Nolan’s films that dark and realistic edge and set them apart from the other Batmans are the younger, smaller, and more Method-y actors he uses.

I was very pleasantly surprised at Heath Ledger’s fabulous Joker, who was like a psychotic Johnny Depp character. Being a fan of A Knight’s Tale et al., I never knew Heath had such a chameleon in him.

Christian Bale was fantastic as always. He has the perfect look, charisma and attitude for Bruce Wayne, the broodiness and darkness for Batman, and the depth to portray both as one man.

The film’s biggest flaw (meaning that this could’ve made the movie even better) was Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Rachel Dawes. I felt the character was underwritten, and that Gyllenhaal gave a somewhat flat performance.

Even more than watching great performances, however I love gaping open-mouthed at the audacity of brilliant writers like Christopher Nolan. The film’s biggest triumph is the multi-lateral climax, with Batman, Commissioner Gordon, Harvey Dent and the Joker hurtling towards the ultimate success or failure of their greatest efforts. The ferry-boat standoff and its conclusion was one of my favorite moments, and its placement in a superhero movie is one of the ways Dark Knight is not like its fellow genre-flicks.

I was excited to find that I could call many of the plot twists just before they occurred, but this is not the flaw of a predictable movie. It’s almost as if those twists are deliberately let slip by Nolan. This extra dramatic irony is more literary than the usual comic relief provided by the hero’s secret identity.

Though this was technically the sequel to Batman Begins, there was a surprising lack of reference to the original, no “previously on Batman” moments. Apart from having the same characters, Dark Knight does not go back to where BB went. It goes somewhere totally new, establishing the sequel as a film totally in its own right. It was very wise of the writers not to put “Batman” in the title, but to give it its own name. The Dark Knight suits it perfectly.